The power bound, the hope reclaimed.
A king of stone, with shadowed crown,
He keeps the fragile peace passed down.
His greatest prize, a love so true?—
His heart shall find its equal too.
Oh Caerhollan, crown of stone,
Shadowed peaks yet not alone.
The High Hold keeps, through steel and flame,
The power bound, the hope reclaimed.
The final chord lingers, trembling through the air before the wind carries it away.
Neither of us speaks for a long moment.
The song stays with me, etched in memory as surely as legacy is carved into every stone of this Hold.
Through steel and flame, through love and ruin—Caerhollanremembers.
And now, so do I.
That night, the melody does not leave me.
I slip into my chamber just as corridors quiet, still half-humming the refrain beneath my breath. The hearth casts a muted glow stretching across the floorboards. My shift brushes against my legs as I move—soft and weightless, as though I walk through someone else’s dream.
The bed feels too large without Vale beside me. He has been called to a late council, one of the countless duties that claim him after dusk. Yet even in his absence, his presence lingers—the faint scent the sheets carry, the ghost of his laughter from earlier echoing like a promise unkept.
I sit at the edge of the mattress, fingers tracing circles absentmindedly along the coverlet as the verses replay in my mind. Not the battles. Not the kings. Only the final stanza.
A king of stone, with shadowed crown,
He keeps the fragile peace passed down.
His greatest prize, a love so true?—
His heart shall find its equal too.
Equal.
The word pulses through me like a heartbeat.
Not beloved. Not chosen. Equal.
Is that what Vale has been waiting for all these years?
Or what Caerhollan itself demands of him?
I lie back against the cool linen, eyes on the ceiling beams that catch the faintest shimmer of moonlight. The words refuse to fade, looping between breath and thought until I can no longer tell whether the ache in my chest is longing or dread.
When sleep finally claims me, it is not the peaceful kind.
Fire bleeds through the darkness—ribbons of light coiling around a shadowed crown. The mountain trembles beneath unseen weight, its heart beating in time with my own. I see faces I do not know and yetsomehow love and hear voices whispering the same refrain through the smoke:
